About Time

As a graduate student in clinical psychology in the 1980s, I was startled when one of my psychotherapy clients didn't wear a wristwatch. I couldn't understand how anyone could function in modern society without one. How could you get anywhere on time?

Of course, as a graduate student and therapist-in-training I needed to rush to and from classes, research activities, meetings, and work, and start and end therapy sessions on the dot unless I wanted to discuss my lax boundaries with a supervisor. In my previous job as a newspaper reporter time had also seemed imperative: I'd had interviews to set, trials and meetings to cover, deadlines to meet. Yet time seemed even more critical when I began grad school, as symbolized by my purchasing a new watch with a second hand so I could keep track of every passing moment, necessary when administering certain psychological tests.

I yearned for a different way of being, and began taking steps toward slowing down and simplifying my life and practice. I pulled out of the group practice I'd entered after internship and moved into a home office. I continued my studies (begun several years previously) into various spiritual traditions and practices, the subtle energies of Reiki and Healing Touch, shamanic journeying, energy psychology, and other forms of healing. Whenever possible I scheduled sessions, phone calls, meetings, and other tasks far enough apart that I (and, I hoped, my clients) would not feel rushed. Fewer sessions meant less income, but increasing serenity made up for any lack. I began to live more in the present moment.

In the fall of 1998 an interview with Evan T. Pritchard in the premiere issue of Spirituality and Health caught my attention. Pritchard had found a Micmac elder, Ben, willing to teach him the language and ways of his Algonquin ancestors. (The Micmacs are a branch of the Algonquin people of the northeastern U.S. and Canada.) One day Pritchard asked Ben the Micmac word for "time." He was told there isn't one.

"The Algonquins are in a world where there's no clock time," Pritchard told writer Robert Owens Scott. "All there is, is process time. Things get done in the time they need to be done."

It's hard to put into words how much this concept resonated with me. (At a superficial level, imagine being able to work with distressed people in therapy without every few weeks having to justify further sessions to managed care clerks who have never met the people whose "care" they ration.) I devoured Pritchard's book No Word for Time: The Way of the Algonquin People a few months later after finding it for sale in the museum at Old Stone Fort State Park in Manchester, TN.

Pritchard's interview and book furthered my understanding of the relationship between time (or perhaps more appropriately, the not-enough-time rushing about so epidemic in modern life) and the sacred.

A working clock is never still, and thus never in the present moment. Focusing on external measures of time pulls us out of our own center, which is our personal gateway to the eternal now.

Relying on clock time can also alienate us from our body (and soul's) natural appetites for sleep, rest, food, drink, and creativity.

I began thinking longingly of a study I'd read about several years ago, in which a scientist lived for a year in a cave deep underground. She had food, water, and electricity, but no means of measuring time. Without the natural cycles of day and night to provide cues, her sleep/wake cycle began to elongate. She might stay up for 36 hours and sleep for 12, as if her personal experience of time had dilated.

I wondered what it would be like to conduct an experiment above ground: What if I lived without a clock, watch, or calendar for a year? Would I be forced to pay more attention to my body's signals for rest and nourishment? But how could I work with clients without a schedule?

Pritchard has seen groups of Algonquin people spontaneously assemble and silently set to work on a task, able to come together without any prior planning because they shared the same intent and were "of one mind." It's as if not focusing on clock time (as well as, I'm sure, other external matters) facilitated a going-within, a slowing down and centering that allowed their consciousness to sink to a deeper level in which their minds were linked. (Which reminds me of Larry Dossey's mention in Reinventing Medicine that aboriginal Australians used smoke signals not to communicate different messages through the smoke itself, but rather to signal all within sight that a message would be transmitted. Upon seeing the smoke signal all individuals would pause and open to the incoming message, which would be received telepathically only by the one for whom it was intended. The smoke signal simply told them to stop whatever they were doing and enter a receptive state.)

Since reading Pritchard's interview and book I've continued my steps toward timelessness. I began resigning from managed care panels, then quit accepting and processing insurance at all. I still use clocks and external time to set, start, and end sessions, but the once-weekly 50-minute hour is no longer sacrosanct. I might work with some clients once a week, some every other week, some once a month or even less. We work for an hour, 90 minutes, or even two hours at a time depending on what works best, with the charge prorated on my hourly fee. (We do set the length of session in advance, as I haven't been able to completely let go of the need for scheduling.) Most sessions take place face-to-face, but some occur over the phone.

I still wear my Timex wristwatch, although I take it off while meditating. Over the past few months I've noticed it tends to run a few minutes behind the clocks in my office despite having a fresh battery installed, and no matter how many times I reset it. Perhaps it's slowing down along with me, and one day we'll both reach that state of timelessness.

Or maybe I'll eventually have the courage just to chuck it altogether.

Dossey, Larry (1999). Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

Pritchard, Evan T. (1997). No Word for Time: The Way of the Algonquin People. Tulsa, OK: Council Oak Books.

Scott, Robert Owens (Fall 1998). Timeless Wisdom. Spirituality & Health, 48-49, 53.